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Salary Funding Information

RCR Training Course

Per Georgia Tech’s Responsible Conduct of Research Compliance Policy, it is a requirement for PURA students to complete an online RCR training course through the CITI Program. The training must be completed prior to the start of your semester of PURA funding. Georgia Tech believes it is important for researchers to have a shared understanding of their obligations when conducting research. Please visit the website here, read all instructions, and follow the link to begin the CITI RCR Training. You only have to complete the training once, even if you are awarded subsequent PURA salary awards. If you have any questions concerning the training, please contact Judy Willis, Administrator of Graduate Research Ethics Programs, at judy.willis@gatech.edu.

“Important: For security reasons, before clicking the green “button” on the online training page, be sure to close all browser windows and tabs and then reopen your browser. Otherwise you may not get proper credit for your CITI courses.”

Hire, Payroll, and Award Disbursement

Each student awardee will be allocated up to $1,500 to be used during the specific semester of application for hourly wages. Students are not paid a stipend. The number of hours worked and the schedule will be determined jointly between the faculty mentor and student awardee and any graduate/post-doctoral student co-mentor. Suggested hourly wage is $10/hr.

Students that receive salary awards will be put on the payroll in the faculty mentor’s school and must fill out time sheets for hours actually worked. Please note that most schools require students to fill out bi-weekly timesheets in order to be paid for work. Faculty mentors will serve as supervisors and sign all timesheets. The financial manager/officer in the faculty mentor’s school/department will assist with details regarding placement on the payroll. We advise each student to speak with his/her faculty mentor first to agree upon an hourly rate and number of hours to work before talking to the financial point of contact. During fall and spring semesters, PURA salary students are not permitted to accept salary or stipend funding from other sources for work on the same project funded by PURA. During the summer, it is permissible for a mentor to use his/her own funding to continue a student’s hourly wages after the PURA funds are expended. Students eligible for federal work study may use this in conjunction with PURA funding. It is the student and faculty mentor’s responsibility to keep track of hours worked and to not overspend the $1,500 maximum. Overcharges must be paid back by the school or may be the responsibility of the student.

Students must go over to the Office of Human Resources (located at 500 Tech Parkway) to be added to payroll. Students will be expected to bring their social security card and two forms of identification (driver’s license and either passport or birth certificate). Please talk to your financial point of contact before going over.

Undergraduate students at Georgia Tech are not allowed to perform research for pay and receive course credit for a project at the same time. Monies not used in the semester of funding will revert back to the Institute for reallocation by the UROP office as both PURA salary and travel funding. Students who do not plan to accept their award should inform the UROP office before the start of the first day of classes so that the funding can be allocated to another deserving student.

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS:

International students who do not have a social security number must apply for one before being able to receive compensation. This may take time, so do not delay in applying. Please refer to the Office of International Education’s website here for information on how to apply. The UROP office does not issue formal letters of employment.Your faculty mentor’s school will be hiring you, therefore requests for a formal letter of employment should be directed to your mentor’s school’s financial point of contact.

Course Registration

Students who accept a salary award are required to register for the Research Assistantship course (XXXX 2698 or XXXX 4698) in the appropriate school and college of the faculty mentor. This audit, non-billable (free) course will be listed on the student’s transcript and will indicate the number of hours the student performed research for pay. The hours for this audit class do not count towards graduation. Permits are required to register for these courses. Please contact the academic advisor in your faculty mentor’s school for additional information. Each school has different procedures for students to follow, and specific course sections must first be created for students. A list of PURA awardees will be sent to each school so that the 2698 and 4698 course sections with appropriate faculty may be listed as options during registration. Please follow the procedures for permits that exist in your faculty mentor’s school. Please submit your permit requests several days before the deadline to add courses, as several signatures are often required before a course can be created for a student and registration code provided. For more information, please visit the Registrar’s website here.

For example, if your faculty mentor resides in the School of Mechanical Engineering, you would sign up for either ME 2698 or ME 4698, depending on your class status. For each three hours of research expected per week, a student should register for one hour. For example, if you expect to work on the project nine hours per week, you should register for three hours. Co-op students or students with full-time paid internships during a semester may not accept PURA funding during that same semester.

Students should not sign up for other special problems courses or other undergraduate research courses (i.e., XXXX 2699/XXXX 4699) for which grades are received unless working on a completely separate research project. Georgia Tech does not allow undergraduate students to receive pay and credit for the same work.

All PURA salary students are required to submit a final report to the UROP office by the last day of finals during the semester of award. The report, submitted online, should outline the student’s work and accomplishments during the semester and should closely follow both the formatting and style of high-end scientific publications such as Science and Nature, when applicable. Sections may include the following:

Introduction/Background Information (Define all terminology and concepts unfamiliar to readers outside the discipline, introduce the motivation for this research and hypotheses.)

Methods/Procedures/Materials (Explain and justify research methods.)

Results (Present results objectively.)

Discussion/Analysis (Explain any trends, implications, and possible causes of the results.)

Future Work (Describe unfulfilled objectives and outline future research necessary to better understand the phenomena.)

References

Acknowledgements (Funding sources, including PURA, should be acknowledged, as well as collaborators, faculty, and/or graduate student mentors.)

Two pages is the recommended minimum length, and longer reports will be accepted, particularly since many faculty mentors already ask for longer works as final reports. A final report that is requested by the faculty mentor can be submitted as the PURA final report, assuming it follows the general structure outlined above. The report must be submitted before the deadline through the online form here.

All PURA salary students are also required to create a final video (approx. two minutes long) that documents the research done during the semester of PURA funding. The video should consist of original footage. As the UROP office would like to share these videos with department leadership and feature outstanding videos on the UROP website, please be sure to have your faculty research mentor approve all video content prior to submission for the protection of your research. The Georgia Tech Library rents out video equipment to students, information on which can be found here. Once you have finished your video and received your mentor’s approval for circulation, please upload the video, along with your final report, directly to the online form. The video file must be less than 125MB, and allowed file types are avi, wmv, mov, and mp4.

Any persons, including yourself, who are featured and clearly identifiable in the video must sign the release form found here. All signed release forms must be uploaded along with your final video by the last day of finals.

­Research Co-Mentors

Students who are co-mentored by a graduate student or post-doctoral student should share the information on this page with their co-mentor. Students should also inform the UROP office of any additional mentoring being performed on a day-to-day basis by a graduate student or other mentor so that he/she can be appropriately thanked for their work at the end of the semester.

Human or Animal Subjects Research

Some research work may need to be monitored via the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for ethical reasons. This mostly pertains to any work with human or animal subjects, however other work may fall under their purview (e.g., surveys or questionnaires). To be safe, please discuss this possibility with your faculty mentor and the IRB. The Georgia Tech IRB has asked that students list PURA funds on any IRB forms. For additional information, please visit the Georgia Tech IRB website.

Research Abroad

Students participating in research abroad that is not associated with an official Georgia Tech Study Abroad program should ideally have already spoken with the Office of International Education concerning the experience. Students will be considered to be officially associated with Georgia Tech in an "International Academic Project (IAP)." Each student should read and complete the required documents on the IAP website here.

Presentation Opportunities

Students are strongly encouraged to present their work in an appropriate forum on campus during or after their research experience. Students are particularly encouraged to apply to present at Georgia Tech’s Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium, as well as other college or school-sponsored symposia or events.